Going With the Flow

Life is an adventure, isn't it? Well, mine has been. Seems I go from one thing to another or sometimes from ten things to another. Everything happens at once some times. What's that old saying? It never rains but what it pours?

Mom and I have been very close most of my life. We used to have the odd disagreement when I was a teen, but never since I've been an adult. Now within two weeks, we've had three disagreements and one was quiet hot and heavy. The reason for this is that Mom is having trouble downsizing her house. We've found that when her roof leaked and was replaced five years ago, that the downstairs room we were going to be using for a bedroom had never been properly cleaned. The carpet and the walls both had mold on them. We ripped up the carpet, treated the walls for mold, sealed the area, as instructed by a mold expert, and laid a beautiful new wood floor. All Mom did the entire time was criticize hubby and Brandon on the job they were doing, which was an excellent job. The room was very crooked and difficult to get perfect. Mom knows this. She and Dad practically build their home from the ground up and she knows that today's houses are not square or level. That was ignored and no one said a word.

Last week, Mom and I had words over a box of newspaper that she wanted to hoard. I told her it had to go into the garbage. That made her very angry. Now this newspaper smelled musty and was nasty. It was not something she could reuse. I took the box from her and put it into the garbage bag and she blew up.

The next disagreement was about a bunch of little fabric pieces no bigger than an inch square. She had a huge plastic bag of them. I told her they were absolutely no good. She said she knew someone who would use them and I told her to give them to that person then because she had no room for them. She won that round. They are still sitting in the family room, which is huge and it's piled halfway to the ceiling with fabric, craft items and things she will never use.

Round three was the other day when she tried to save plastic bags, greeting card boxes and more newspaper. We had quite a disagreement on that one because some of them were moldy. We also found that the laundry room has mold all down the north wall, which can be easily treated because it is cement. However, I'm to the point of giving up.

Mom wanted to stay in her home and was hoping we could help her out. I'm not sure I'm willing to do that any longer, because she is being unreasonable and not making good choices, or for that matter, any choices. She is just clinging to mildewed and moldy items and moving them from one room in the house to another. Any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated.